IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This morning, during word study, we were detectives!  Groups of kids were looking for sounds in words and different word endings in books.  We have been talking a lot about patterns in words and today we challenged the kids to find these things in books.  Our goal is to have them be able to apply their learning to real text and the hunt made an instant connection to this.

This afternoon, we had a special closing meeting with Miss Cegielski’s class.  We talked about friendship and practiced using “bug statements” together.  These are things that we use if someone is upset and needs to talk with their friends.  (ie: The first friend says, “It bugs me when you talk loudly because it makes me feel angry.  I would like you to stop.”  The second student replies with “I understand it bugs you when I talk loudly because it makes you feel angry.  I will stop.”)  We will be using these in our classroom to help us express our feelings.  Feel free to practice them at home!

Cameron and Sydney, from Miss Cegielski’s class are showing our friends how to use bug statements.

Hello again from the Butler Classroom! This week we were mainly focusing on our Teacher Research Questions and Projects. Teacher Research Projects are where teachers focus on a way to improve one aspect in their classroom. We look for a question that is specific to your own classroom as well as achievable in the few weeks we have left at the Lab School. We looked at different teacher research projects from Madison, WI. We were able to see how other teachers have incorporated their research projects into their classrooms. We all worked on forming our own questions that were specific enough, but also would lead us to discover an answer we might not have originally been looking for. On top of that, we discussed how to inventory books with our class. There are baskets that we put our books into that we labeled as sing-alongs, awards, wordless picture books, repetitive and interactive text, family, and go to books. This is important, because it organizes books into these categories so that our friends can find certain books that they want to read. It is also important to discuss it and decide it with a class, because we want them to feel that they have a say in their classroom setup. This creates a community and a sense of ownership and belonging into their environment.
Written by Lauren Neifert, Carly Glickman, and Rosalie Fidanze

This is a picture of the labels that we gave to our book baskets for our book inventory in the Butler Classroom.

Today was fun because we celebrated Isai, Heaven, and Niall’s birthdays! They baked cupcakes for us and the children were so excited to celebrate them as well as eat cupcakes! It was great to see the children celebrate their friends!

Today I saw Selah’s book she has been working on during Story Workshop. She has been working on this book for a couple of weeks. It is all about what we do at school. One page really struck me because she drew us in a circle eating snack. I absolutely LOVED the detail she included in the picture. I also felt that she captured something we do each day-build community. I wanted to just share this picture because I thought it was beautiful!

Each Friday in Math we have been playing different games to target math skills such as math facts and number sense.  This week the students were able to choose between all of the games we have learned so far.  Students played Number Burglar, Make 10 Go Fish, Ten Frame War, and Addition Tic Tac Toe.  Each pair of students chose two games to play.   I heard many conversations between partners involving deep mathematical thinking.  The students are really improving on the strategies behind the games!

Our science provocations this week have centered around observing and using magnifying glasses.  Many students expressed an interest in working on their observation skills by completing observational drawings.  We decided that we wanted to do observational drawings of a tree.  At the end of the day we spent some time observing the tree and drawing.  The students made detailed observations such as “leaves are already starting to fall” and “there’s a nest in this tree.” We will continue developing our observation skills next week!

Remember that Monday is picture day! Students DO NOT have to wear uniforms. Also Wednesday is our planting day.  Again, students do not have to wear uniforms.  Please send them in clothes that you don’t mind if they get dirty. Have a great weekend!

This week we have been studying a reading strategy called chunking. This helps us identify common letter blends and smaller words within an unknown word. We have used many strategies to explore this decoding method all week. First, we cut apart words written on index cards based on chunks that we found. We used magnetic letters to pull apart words that we were unsure about to see what sight words we could find. We also read a book about a boy named Anthony who realized his name Included the word ant, so he looked for ants every where he went.

Encourage your child to look for common chunks when reading with them at home! This will make attacking unfamiliar words easy and help them feel successful as they read.